A silver lining to the ITV News Channel cloud? I wish to respond to the claims made by Steve Hewlett (Why has ITV closed its news channel?, December 19).

The ITV News Channel provided a high-quality, rolling news service that was great value for money. It was able to deliver award-winning coverage time and again, using the efficiency and scale of the main news-gathering capacity of ITV News to best advantage.

While ITV's decision to close the News Channel is a great disappointment, its loss will not affect the ability of ITN to continue to produce outstanding news programmes. ITN's news-gathering capability will, in fact, be enhanced by ITV's increased investment in the main news programmes for ITV1. 2005 was a very successful year for us and this additional resource means that ITN can continue to build on this success, providing a distinctive news service to ITV, renowned for the quality of its coverage.

ITN has continuously harnessed new technology to develop and innovate. We have fast-growing businesses in new media areas, such as ITN Archive and ITN Multimedia, where we are established as the UK's leading supplier of news and other video content to 3G mobile phones. ITN is a dynamic company, with a strong 24-hour news culture and the ability to continue to bring viewers the big, breaking stories of the future.Mark Wood, chief executive, ITN

What viral marketing really means None of the spoofs and ads listed in the viral marketing review (Go Figure: Viral Marketing, December 19) appear to follow the principle of this phenomenon. Viral marketing is not the same as people forwarding an email attachment to their friends and colleagues, otherwise it would be called word-of-mouth (or word-of-email). The term viral is metaphorical. The metaphor is that viruses pass from one host to another without the transmitter being aware that they are passing it on - or having a particular desire to do so.

IT commentator Esther Dyson nailed the term in the Guardian some years ago, and also expanded on the theme where she noted that: "The best viral marketing is not just word-of-mouth, as some people carelessly assume ... Each time the user uses the product/service, he's promoting it to others." (Second sight, Esther Dyson, Guardian Unlimited, April 8, 1999). The classic virally-marketed product was Hotmail, which advertised itself at the end of each message sent - without the user being aware of this.

Viral marketing is one of the most misused terms in new media. One would think that having been aware of the many word abuses during the internet bubble - such as virtual, portal and push media - commentators would be a bit sceptical about a term that is so liberally used. We need to be more careful with our language if we want to make the most of real innovations in new media. Nico Macdonald, London